What do the salivary glands produce sex hormones for if they are to help in the digestion of food only? After all, we do not reproduce by mouth! Nevertheless, every layman intuitively perceives these affinities between the trunk and the head. Everybody knows what kissing on the lips means – it represents the thought of sexual intercourse. Everybody knows that eyes are a “window to the soul”, much like the kidneys are closely associated with the psyche. Everybody has experienced emotion that makes not only the adrenal glands secret their substances, but also the eyes shed tears. Everybody can guess that the heart of the head is on the forehead between the eyebrows where Indian women wear a red dot. All thoughts become deeds and the distorted theories of man are always being transferred to distorted social practice, too. For instance, genetic determinism steered us toward eugenics and concentration camps. It went on to be taught at universities until the end of the 20th century in spite of the fact that it logically leads ultimately to Nazism, which we have already condemned. It has been strongly suggested that DNA is a program containing unambiguous instructions according to which the human body is built and operates. Everything up to the psyche begins from a sequence of amino acids in the DNA chain. All of us, however, get a randomly shuffled sequence at conception. Scientists have observed a simultaneity of psychological states with levels of certain substances in the blood. Hence they have come to the conclusion that psychological states are caused by these substances. The same states can be induced by the administering of these substances, too. In reality, they had a second choice though: that on the contrary, the psyche effects the synthesis of these substances. And spiritual experimentation could prove that man can control their levels by a decision of the will. Further, scientists have observed connections between certain genes and diseases. Hence they concluded that disease was caused by a gene, and so it is incurable since nobody can change their genome. Causation was directed only from the genome to everything else, not vice versa. A killer presumably had a gene that decreases the level of serotonin in his brain and causes aggression. If we had to be consistent, the court would have to admit that the killer is not to be blamed because it is a mere chemical chain reaction triggered by the killer gene. He should be absolved of guilt as not being sui juris. Why has that not been followed by anybody? Because this scientific concept deeply contradicts moral intuition and first-hand experience when making free decisions. Scientists have entirely omitted the dimension of moral will from the whole of reality. Had they experimented with this dimension – as various saints and ascetics have – they would have discovered that man can resist and overcome his instincts and the urge of his hormones, and no drug can impel man to act against his moral convictions. Thanks to self-mastery, even bad genes do not manifest themselves. Only at the end of the 20th century did this view begin to change at last. A new subbranch of science emerged – epigenetics. We are now beginning to understand that DNA 64 (28) Emil Páleš
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